Tropes are neutral story patterns like the loner that work because they're about relationships and belonging. They're tools creators can reuse intentionally, shaped by tone and context rather than locked into one meaning.
It's a general concept that's, like, easily identifiable and relatable to humans. There's a couple other things that I've come to understand with tropes, and one is that I feel that they're. They don't have a judgment. It's just an idea. So when we say something like, like loner, it could be either somebody who's a quote unquote good loner or a bad loner. It's just like this idea of a person who's isolated and it's going to go on a search for community. And then really, the other thing that I think is important is that tropes are about relationships. And that's what I think. That instinctiveness that people are drawn to them with is that, oh, we all want stories about relationships, but tropes give us, like, a vehicle to do it. So those are like the things that I think about with tropes and that I hope people can. If you come away with anything with this from me, it's okay. It's like something that I already know that's out there, but maybe I haven't thought about using it in these ways.
